Page 56 of I Hate You More

“Are you sure you don’t want to take another peek at the tiaras?” Ruby’s mom once again stood holding the glittering key ring that led to the glories of her past. This time, however, she was standing in front of a filing cabinet in a small back bedroom instead of the storage pod. “Honestly, honey, you’re going about this all wrong.”

“I think I smell dinner burning.” Ruby waited until her mother sniffed the air before snatching the keys. “Ha! You aren’t even cooking anything. You’re planning on serving me celery sticks and iced wine.”

Her mother sniffed. “There’s no need to be mean, Ruby. I got you a tub of hummus to go with the celery.”

Ruby’s stomach rumbled its appreciation. Store-bought hummus might not sound like much to the outside world, but it represented a huge step in the right direction. She might leave this house with actual nutrients in her body.

“Is it the garlicky kind I like?” Ruby asked.

“Of course not. No man is going to want to kiss you if you’re running around smelling like an Italian restaurant.”

Ruby knew better than to argue. There was no need to point out that things like toothbrushes and mouthwash existed or that people had been consuming garlic for centuries and still managed to further the species. If her mother had once read it in a magazine, it was taken as law.

“Well, I appreciate the hummus all the same.” She found the key she was looking for and stabbed it into the lock of the filing cabinet. Like the storage container neatly organized with the vestiges of Ruby’s former glory, the filing cabinet was equally organized. A copy of every prize check she’d ever earned, her pageant scores and certificates, newspaper clippings highlighting her successes—if the name Ruby Taylor appeared anywhere in print, her mother had carefully preserved the paper it came on.

“What Idon’tappreciate is your obsession with the past,” she said as she fished out an advertisement for a brand of cereal that had long since gone defunct. Her eight-year-old face beamed as she scooped in a mouthful of wheat bran. She’d been hired for the campaign because of her wholesome, all-American appearance, which later turned out to be code for deeply problematic views on eugenics. “Why are you holding onto this ad, Mom? You can hardly put it on a Christmas card and send it out to your friends.”

Her mom winced as she plucked the ad from Ruby’s hand. “I didn’t know how awful the company was at the time. I didn’t know much of anything, to be honest. I was twenty six and had just divorced Stepfather Un. Remember? He took everything with him when he left—all the furniture, all the food. He even pulled every last light bulb from its socket. I would have put you in a commercial foranythingat that point.”

Ruby felt a pang as she watched her mother smooth the magazine page and fold it back up, something like reverence in her movements.

“I do remember,” Ruby said softly. “You told me we were going to camp inside the apartment for a few weeks—we slept on blankets in the living room and hung a string of Christmas lights from the ceiling so we could pretend they were stars. I thought it was the best thing ever.”

“We lived on that racist cereal for three weeks,” her mother added thoughtfully. “I lost almost eight pounds. It was the best thing that could have happened, now that I think about it.”

“Mom, you don’t mean that.”

Her mom laughed. “Of course I do. That was when I met Stepfather Deux. I’d never looked so good.”

Ruby waited, exasperated, for her mother to expand on the theme. Although there was no denying that Stepfather Deux had changed both their lives for the better, her mother had to see how outrageous it had been—selling her daughter’s face to a soulless company, barely surviving in an apartment that had only been paid through the month, a secondhand harp the only item of value they owned.

She didn’t.

With a sigh, Ruby turned her attention back to the filing cabinet, her fingers rifling through until she found what she was looking for. Extracting the single sheet, she gave voice to the question that had been taking shape in her mind ever since she’d met Spencer Wilson. “Didn’t you ever want more out of life?”

“More?” Her mother blinked. “Of what? Money? Of course I did. What do you think all that work was for?”

Ruby shook her head. She wasn’t talking about landing a modeling contract or being discovered by a talent agency. She also wasn’t talking about the kind of work she and her mom had always fallen back on—the waitressing and the caregiving, the jobs that never seemed to turn into careers no matter how many years they spent doing them.

“What is that?” Her mom nodded down at the page in her hand. “It doesn’t look like much.”

“It’s not, unfortunately.” Ruby grimaced as she glanced at the close-written text. Unlike the rest of the glories in this filing cabinet, this was a sea of mediocrity or, more accurately, C’s of mediocrity. “It’s my high school transcript. Look. The only class I got an A in was gym, and that was because of all the running and yoga I did. I always beat the other kids in the mile.”

Her mom ignored the latter half of her statement. “Your high school transcript? What on earth do you need that for?”

“I don’t know yet,” Ruby said honestly. She turned her gaze on her mother, aware that this next part was going to be even more painful. “Didn’t I win a couple of scholarships at one point? I know those were offered sometimes instead of prize money. A lot of the girls got full rides to college that way.”

“College?Is that what this is about?”

“Where did they go?” Ruby asked as she began searching through the filing cabinet once again. “You kept literally everything else. Look, you even saved my dental bills.”

“I’m sure I don’t know what you’re talking about.” Her mother tossed her head and tried to pull Ruby away from the cabinet. “You can’t expect me to remember the exact prize from every pageant you entered.”

Ruby leveled her with a hard stare. “Miss Junior Puget Sound, 2006.”

Her mother didn’t want to answer. The firm set of her lips caused her rose lipstick to smear, and she shook her head until her platinum locks tumbled over her shoulders. Like her daughter, however, Laurel Taylor couldn’t resist a challenge once it had been offered.

“Three thousand dollars and a photo shoot with that modeling agency from Portland.” Her mom threw up her hands. “There. Are you happy now?”